The Moscow city prosecutor's office has said that a district prosecutor has decided to close a high-profile slavery case, arguing there were no grounds to launch an investigation.

The Moscow prosecutor's spokeswoman, Yelena Rassokhina, told journalists that Russia's Investigative Committee was appealing the decision of Moscow's Preobrazhensky district prosecutor to close the case.

Earlier this month, Russian civic activists announced that they had managed to free 14 Central Asians, including three children, from de facto slavery in a Moscow supermarket where they were allegedly beaten and forced to work against their will.

Prominent Russian human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina, the chairwoman of Moscow-based Civic Collaboration Committee, said on November 14 that her organization will appeal the prosecutor’s decision in court, and possibly also in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.